April 2011

2011.04.26

As someone deeply concerned about this issue, I find it particularly vexing to hear the same myths used again and again to argue for the inevitability of this approach to solar development. These myths deserve to be looked at more closely.

2011.04.22

Today is Earth Day, a once grassroots movement seeking to remind people to pay attention to the earth which has now grown to become a global event apparently "celebrated" by over a billion people - much of it courtesy of your neighborhood multinational corporations who have co-opted the day to urge you to buy more products at special discounts to "celebrate Earth Day". They must mean "celebrate our collective destruction of this earth for profit and a few fun consumer products and gadgets". Why, instead of actually going out and planting a tree today, you can enjoy playing Lorax Garden" on your iPhone! Download for free today!! After all, why bother getting your hands dirty in an actual garden when you can get virtual karma playing it on your smartphone. Surely that's what the Lorax wanted us to do, no?

2011.04.21

Staying Alive is a blog that sets out to offer academics a vision of a life that's larger than the confines of academia. It is also a blog that, after looking through its archives, is clearly not one I should add to my blogroll.

Basically, it's a somewhat more thoughtful version of Chronicleland, in which success is possible if you only try hard enough and think creatively enough. Now, I get that for some people, hopeful stories and positive role models are motivating. Telling people that the world won't end for them if they don't end up with a tenure-track job isn't a bad thing.

But telling people that failure is a gift that teaches one to embrace risk, that one can just shake off the emotional devastation of career catastrophe, and that enriching alternatives are there for the taking if one makes a focused enough effort?

All that is bullshit. Or, at least, the effort to turn it into one-size-fits-all advice is bullshit.

Really great piece - it explains the problem with business-as-usual industrial solar, and lays out many, many alternatives.

Particularly thought-provoking is his assertion - with which I agree - that the problem isn't fossil fuels vs. nuclear vs. solar vs. wind vs... but rather: we consume a lot of energy, unthinkingly, and expansively. That's not sustainable, regardless of the source it comes from.

Check out these talking points at Solar Done Right, and send in your own comments by April 16th.

Don't fall for the industry greenwashing that claims that solar is inherently environmentally friendly. It's not - it depends on how it is done and where it is sited. Massive solar plants sited on pristine wildlands inhabited by endangered desert tortoises is NOT environmentally sound energy development, however much they want us to believe that.

2011.04.05

It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.

2011.04.04

APRIL 4, 2011 – The Obama administration’s mammoth environmental impact statement for its public lands solar program is fatally flawed, has no legal justification, and should be scrapped, a leading solar energy advocacy group says.

Alternative energy should be just that - something other than business and politics as usual. Solar energy as promoted by this administration is nothing more than greenwashed industrial power plants, sited right in the heart of some of our most biologically valuable wildlands.